1.Make the education of our young people and adults the top priority – because good schools and good education means good jobs.

We need to provide Richmond teachers with the resources they need to educate our children. Richmond cannot prepare its young people for successful careers when it spends more dollars per student than any of its surrounding counties but dedicates less of those dollars to the classroom.

Richmond also needs to recognize that there is more than one way to educate and we need to ensure that all of our students receive the skills they need to become part of the workforce of the future. That is why I support additional technical schools in the City.

We need to improve the safety of our schools. Our students are fighting an uphill battle when they must deal with serious incidents of violence in their schools. We need to conduct public safety audits of our schools and make sure that no matter where our children are learning or what they are learning, they are safe.

2. Cut government waste and fraud so that services can be delivered more effectively and property taxes can be reduced.

We need to cut tax bills – not just our tax rates. The City Council talks about lowering your tax rate, but the assessments shoot sky high, which means families pay more in these tough economic times. That is not the kind of leadership we need in Richmond.

I want to minimize waste and maximize value in city government. That means better use of technology, streamlining administrative processes, and cutting excess and waste. We need to stop shortchanging GRTC and expand bus routes rather than cutting those routes critical to the people of Richmond.

3. Build upon the gains we’ve made in reducing crime across our City.

One of my top priorities will be to continue community policing and ensure that we have enough police on the street who are equipped with the technology to do their jobs.

4. Improve regional cooperation.

We need to reach out to the administrations of the neighboring jurisdictions and engage in a mutually beneficial dialog. An immediate place to begin the cooperation is with mass transit. In these precarious economic times and with spiraling gasoline prices, we need to ensure that all our citizens can get to their jobs, both in and out of the City. We need to have dependable regional mass transit that will make certain this can happen, while also protecting and preserving our environment.

5. End bickering at City Hall.

The people at City Hall are supposed to be public servants and this means they need to work for the benefit of the people of Richmond. The people cannot be served when their representatives are busy bickering and trying to score political points. We need to get rid of the status quo and usher in a new era of cooperative accomplishment.

1.To reduce youth crime and delinquency, I would develop a youth conservation corps to provide opportunities for employment and structured recreational activities. I would supplement the current community-policing program with Problem Oriented Policing that will integrate citizens, police, and ancillary services to respond to specific problems and focus on policing problems that result from crime analysis.

2.Richmond is threatened by the collapse of major financial institutions and severe restrictions that have befallen the housing market. Revenue sharing is likely to become impacted in the near future. The biggest impediment to economic development in Richmond is the limited quantities of arable land. Minority business concerns have also run into impediments in receiving an equitable share of the business, government, and commercial spending that occurs in the city. An ordinance structured along the lines of the Small Business sheltered markets that operate nationally could be very helpful in Richmond. Inclusion can only increase the vibrancy of the city and its commercial health.

3.With respect to housing, there needs to be greater oversight over the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority in order that the homes of lower income residents and housing opportunities for working class-and lower-middle class housing does not evaporate entirely. In addition, workforce housing needs to be greatly supplemented, in order that police officers, firefighters, teachers, and other classified employees can afford to live in the city.

4.It seems that the current system or responding to citizen complaints and satisfying service needs is overwhelmed. Short of a civic education program to direct citizens toward specific services, each council district should be allocated an ombudsman’s office to supplement the work of Council Liaisons. A community information network and electronic and print newsletters would help citizens and interest groups to understand policy and problems that confront council. These initiatives would reduce the confrontational nature of much citizen-council interaction by the sharing of information.

5.To assess the true academic progress of students, it would be necessary to correlate Standards of Learning Scores with the National Assessment of Education Progress results. To gain real and true composites of learning problems and teaching difficulties, it would be pertinent to engage teachers in professional development programs, while students would be exposed to curriculums that would prepare them to compete in a global economy. Phonics would replace the whole language approach to reading and language arts. For middle- and high-school students, take-home laptops would be provided to integrate technology into instruction and homework. Even more importantly, aging facilities will be replaced with new schools. To assess the true academic progress of students, it would be necessary to correlate Standards of Learning Scores with the National Assessment of Education Progress results. To gain real and true composites of learning problems and teaching difficulties, it would be pertinent to engage teachers in professional development programs, while students would be exposed to curriculums that would prepare them to compete in a global economy. Phonics would replace the whole language approach to reading and language arts. For middle- and high-school students, take-home laptops would be provided to integrate technology into instruction and homework. Even more importantly, aging facilities will be replaced with new schools.

I’m tired of the non-human voice of the corporation having a say.

1. Implement the Goldman “City of the Future” plan, which all my opponents, even the Mayor has praised, which will among other things begin the modernization our public school facilities, on average roughly 60 years of age used state statistics and the oldest such system in the state. Unfortunately, the Pantele-Wilder government we have had for the last two years has meant not a single school has been modernized in the last 4 years.

2. Stop the Echo Harbor project, and build a green DNA into our future building code, which of course will require the election of myself as Mayor, as my major opponents are too beholden to the special interests to pledge to stop Echo Harbor among other real estate projects.

3. If we want to be a first tier city, then we can no longer remain last in job creation among the state’s cities, as was found to be the case in the Kaine Administration study. This is why I have proposed to stop skewing city policies to favor certain special interests and instead concentrate on creating jobs with tax policy and economic incentives.

4. Elect a Mayor, like myself who has a Masters in Public Administration, and thus actually understands fiscal and budget policy, one that will be honest with the public about the 60 million in waste the City Auditor says the budgets backed by Bill Pantele and Doug Wilder have larded into city government, such waste and inefficiency a good part of the reason why we have the most expensive City Hall, the most expensive City Council and the most expensive School Bureaucracy in the state. We have a fiscal mess in city government, with the Mayor saying the city faces a $6 million dollar deficit and the City Council refusing to guarantee that it will keep it’s commitment to city retirees, despite their previous promises.

5. Appoint David McCoy, now the interim Police Chief, as the permanent Police Chief, which he deserves given the lowest crime rate in more than a generation, not to mention that it will send a message our children need to hear in our town; namely that merit, not political correctness, is the only qualification that should count.

Fantastic question. I will do my part in “shaming” those candidates not willing to answer the question. (14 Point, Red font headline): http://richmondgoodlife.com/mayor2008.htm

Ed